Toilers tragedy shocked Winnipeg in 1933

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/04/2023 (911 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jean Lothian called recently to remind this columnist that March 31 is the anniversary of one of Manitoba’s major sports tragedies.

In the early morning of March 31, 1933 – 90 years ago now — a plane carrying the Winnipeg Toilers basketball team crashed into a farmer’s field near Neodesha, Kan. The 1932 Canadian senior-champion Toilers had been in Tulsa, Okla. to play two games against the Diamond Oilers, the U.S. Amateur Athletic Union champions.

Toiler players Joe Dodds, 21 and Mike Shea Jr., 26, were killed in the crash, along with the pilot, co-pilot, the plane’s owner and the sponsor of the series. Lothian’s father, A.C. (Colonel) Samson, the team’s president, was among seven members of the Toilers group who were injured.

Lothian, who was a baby at the time of the crash, has a family scrapbook filled with newspaper articles, photographs and letters of condolence that tell the Toilers story. Owing to rough weather, the plane was flying low when its left engine failed. When the plane was about 100 feet off the ground, a second engine failed. While the aircraft was greatly damaged upon impact, it did not catch on fire, which likely saved more lives.

Dr. James Naismith, who is credited with inventing the sport of basketball, was among those who visited the survivors while they recuperated in Kansas. At home, a benefit fund was established in aid of the injured members and a public service for Dodds and Shea was held in the Winnipeg Auditorium on April 5. A photo across the top of the front page of the Winnipeg Evening Tribune showed flags at half mast on almost every building in downtown Winnipeg.

While the crash meant the end of the Toilers as a competitive team, it created an unbreakable bond among the surviving members. They regularly held reunions and saw a memorial park in Fort Garry dedicated in the team’s name in 1965. The 1932 team was inducted into the Manitoba Sport Hall of Fame in 2004.

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Word that the Thistle Curling Club would cease to exist as a standalone club on Burnell Street and that its members and leagues will relocate to the Deer Lodge club in St. James had this columnist delving into the memory bank.

The first record of the Thistle can be found in the Winnipeg Free Press in November 1887. The Thistle was born after some members of the Granite club choose to continue curling at a six-sheet rink on Market Street rather than move to the Granite’s new location at the Royal rink off Main Sreet.

The club operated at number of different locations until 1919-20, but did not function as a club in 1920-21. My mother’s oldest brother, Neil Sullivan, was a member of a group called the “Thistle Orphans” who found the Minto Street property where a rink was erected in time for the 1921-22 season. Uncle Neil was the club president in 1933-34 and president of the Manitoba Curling Association in 1938-39. The Thistle remained on Minto until the building burned down in 2006. In 2007, the club moved to the Burnell location that also was home to the Valour Road club.

In its early days, the Thistle produced MCA bonspiel champions such as Bob Dunbar, Mac Braden and Frank Cassidy. Buck Hay and Fred Lay skipped bonspiel champions in the 1960s. Surprisingly, no provincial men’s or women’s champions curled out of the club. Joan Ingram did skip her Thistle Business Girls team to four provincial senior titles between 1989 and 1993. Dot Rose and Elaine James curled on three of the teams and Laurie Bradawaski on two.

My father Trevor, who was a member of the club while it was on Minto Street, took me there for my first exposure to curling when I was three years old. While I never belonged to the Thistle, I was honoured to be asked to update the club’s history for its 100th anniversary celebration in 1987.